JAWS [tiburón]: A Celebration with Two Translators

First published in Mexico in 2015, JAWS by Xitlalitl Rodríguez Mendoza won the Premio Nacional de Poesía Ignacio Manuel Altamirano.

Join us in celebrating this award-winning poetry book’s first publication in English! We’ll be joined by translators Dora Prieto and Daniela Rodríguez Chevalier, in conversation with author Marc Perez.

With sharp lyricism, documentary fragments and cinematic echoes, this poetry collection collapses the distance between sea and office, aquarium and classroom, resumé and body under attack. Fierce, darkly funny, and formally restless, JAWS insists on the shark not as monster, but as mirror—swimming, working, alive and curious about where meaning breaks down across languages and what lurks in the waters between…

Dora Prieto and Daniela Rodríguez Chevalier places Rodríguez Mendoza’s Spanish in conversation with an English that bends, bites, and swims alongside it.

Books will be available for sale. This event is free but please RSVP here.

More about the translators:

Mexican-Canadian poet and translator Dora Prieto writes from Ohlone land (Oakland, CA), where she is a 2025–27 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming with House of Anansi (April 2027), and she is a member of El Mashup Collective, where she collaborates on interdisciplinary artistic experiments. Her work has appeared in Acentos Review, Best New Poets 2025, Catapult, Hazlitt, the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival, and elsewhere. She won the 2025 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry. She is an auntie, a dreamer, a thinker, and a cold ocean swimmer—despite a close encounter with a shark as a kid. ♡☆ @primadora_

Born in Cuernavaca, Mexico ✿ city of eternal Spring ✿ and raised in el Distrito Federal, Daniela Rodríguez Chevalier writes and translates from unceded Coast Salish territories (Vancouver, BC). Her work has appeared in PRISM International, Discorder Magazine, Volume and carte blanche. She is part of eclectic artist collectives *mim* and El Mashup, festival coordinator and film programmer at the Vancouver Latin American Film Fest, and co-host of Vivaporú on CiTR 101.9FM. Foodie who shelves books and binds them too. Ocean child. She has felt the presence of a shark stirring nearby waters. Dani has two feisty gorgeous dachshunds, Xoco and Rol. @la.tacodelic

More about Upstart & Crow:

Upstart & Crow is a not-for-profit creative studio and literary incubator that champions writers, readers and stories, and the role they play in shaping our lives. We develop original programs, support artists and revel in creative projects focused on Literature In Translation / Climate Solutions / Poetry / Civic Dialogue / Community & Skills Building … all with the aim of elevating the role of literature and storytelling in our lives. Find us on Granville Island, Gibsons and online at upstartandcrow.com.

Accessibility:

The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees. As part of disability justice and community care for the chronically ill, vulnerable and elderly, we ask that you refrain from attending if you feel sick.

Questions: hello[at]upstartandcrow.com.